What do people like to cling to in life more than anything? Well it's kind of up for debate but I would like to put forward my view that it is permanence. When it comes down to it, people don't like change. Here's why, why they are wrong and what you can do to stop your life from slowly descending into a routine that kills you just a little bit more inside everyday. Enjoy!
When I say permanence I mean a very specific thing. I think of it as the opposite of change, the continuation of how a state of being or an object is with no deviation from a set point. Humans it seems love things as they are. Of course there are revolutions and advancements but really on the whole people don't like things to be different from how they have always known them. It's taken years for people to win the right to marry whomever they like regardless of gender (in some places it's been won), it took years of protests, placard waving and the First World War to get women the vote, the Catholic Church still believes... well everything that the Catholic Church believes. Only a very few people like and want to upset the applecart. Most people are happy to plod along with their career, their life whether they take pleasure in it or not.
Well actually when I say that people are always bitching and complaining about their lot in life and how miserable they are but how many people actually go out and DO something to change things?
This aversion to changing "the natural order" of things stems (doesn't everything?) from our evolutionary past. Permanence can be good for a species. If a habitat stays effectively the same for thousands and thousands of years then the species can adapt to it's niche perfectly. A sudden change could wipe them out entirely within a few generations (Think of the dodo. Discovered: 1598. Last sighted: 1662. Less than a hundred years.), permanence can be a good thing. Humans have evolved to look for permanence, if not complete permanence then at least predictable changes. Which valley is it better to live in the one that has predictable weather and predictable floods every year or the one with erratic weather patterns that could flood at any time? I know which one I would pick. We have survived as a species because we are good at exploiting permanence and if it doesn't exist then we create it. Unpredictable rains ruining your crops? Irrigation saves the day! Differing temperatures throughout the year? Different clothes to help maintain just the right temperature year round!
Now some of you may be saying "Well yes if everything is going great people aren't going to change things but you just gave examples of people changing things from a bad situation to a good one! Humans love change!" Well yes and no. People have gone against the grain to try and make things better for themselves and others of course but not everyone and not all the time. People will endure a lot before they finally snap and change things and others will perhaps do nothing. Think of all the loveless marriages out there, the ones where people will wait until their 40's or 50's to finally tell their spouse they never really loved them and still others where they never tell them. Change is scary and unpredictable. There is a saying (I can't remember who said it or if it even has a recognised author) and it went something like "A known evil is better than an unknown evil" or something to that effect (Stick around for more half-remembered sayings from unknown authors poorly retold by me in blog form!). The point of the saying is is that with a repetitively bad situation at least it's repetitive. You can become hardened to it, it can almost become comforting just because you know it unlike that vague, shadowy thing off in the distance: the Unknown.
So that's a vague idea as to why people fear change but why is that a bad thing? Well it's bad because change is inevitable. Our universe is based on a system of ever transforming energy. Things grow and develop and then die and rot and are transformed into something entirely different and that's not even going into entropy which I won't get into now. It's the 21st century and you all have Google on your Smart Phone I-Blackberry Touches so go read about it yourself.
Things are destined to change and people need to accept it. One good reason for this is for adaptation. Lets return to our delicious, extinct, flightless friends the dodos. Why did they survive less than a hundred years after humans discovered them? Because they weren't prepared for us in the slightest. Not only were dodos delicious they also had absolutely no fear of humans. There were reports of them wandering up to hungry sailors just because they were curious and then their friends barely reacted as they got brained with a log simply because they didn't understand what was going on. Humans also introduced animals such as pigs and rats which competed with them for food and ate their eggs which conveniently were left in nests on the ground for easy access. They had affectively no natural predators on Mauritius and so they had lost their flight, their fear and their ability to withstand such a sudden wave of enemies.
And that brings me back to my point. We must accept change and prepare for it because if we are prepared we may be able to survive it. It's what has kept us going so far. Our adaptability is what has kept us alive and consigned the dodo to the fossil record.
So we should keep ourselves prepared for change but how exactly do you do that? Is there a special stretch routine or a vitamin pill that will do the trick? Unfortunately no it's something much more painful than that. You have to change things. Mix things up a bit. Rock the boat. Now when I say change things you don't need to do anything mad like shave "Punk" into your hair, change your name to Quark and move to the Pitcairn Islands
(Really interesting place actually. The least populated country in the world. It also has the highest number of sex offenders of any country and I can tell you it's pretty horrible reading about it. Maybe
don't go to Pitcairn...)
or something really crazy like move to Finland to be with your girlfriend, attempt to learn the language and apply to polytechnics to study for a Nursing degree (...), small changes are fine. Do you always eat the same cereal every morning? Try a different one! Do you always go to the same restaurants or bars when you go out? Go somewhere you haven't been before! Always wear the same old clothes? Wear something completely different to what you usually wear. Mix things up.
Little changes like this prevent stagnation. Think about your life. Are you predictable? Could you do things a different way? Do you wash the dishes in the same way every day? Do you have deeply entrenched routines that you just follow without thinking? Break them. What's the worst that could happen? There could be so many hidden benefits. What if you are missing out? If nothing else it will make you think and maybe see things in a new light, a different way. Prepare your self for change by facing the unknown. Take a little step off of the rails and see what happens. Why not?
I mentioned before those people from history that weren't content with their lot. They didn't want to just rely on the rains they wanted to water their crops now! These people are the people that first used fire, that first tamed animals, that invented the wheel. These people invented rockets that could take people into space. They brought down governments and tyrants, they overthrew kingdoms and fought for equality. Those people that stepped outside the boundaries, maybe just a little bit, are the people that have transformed and guided and CHANGED humanity. Change is good. Accept change. Don't just accept your lot like the dodo. Grow, expand, change.
